


Blackavar's Warning

by grey



Category: Watership Down
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 21:17:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grey/pseuds/grey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While on a journey to Nutley Copse with Bigwig and the others, Blackavar struggles to find his place in the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blackavar's Warning

**Author's Note:**

> I don't much like Tales from Watership Down, so I didn't take any of it into account when writing this story. The action here takes place just before And Last, the final chapter of Watership Down.
> 
> Watership Down and the other locations from Adams' book are (or, in some cases, once were) real places in Hampshire, England. I've never been there, but I wanted to stay somewhat true to the location. The following sites were a great help:
> 
> http://www.mayfieldiow.freewire.co.uk/watershp/ The Real Watership Down (photos of the Down)  
> http://www.helsinki.fi/~peuha/english/watership/ Richard Adams' Watership Down (map of the Down)  
> http://www.loganberry.furtopia.org/bnb/index.html Bits n' Bob-Stones (photos &amp; maps of the Down)
> 
> Please take a look if you'd like to see what the Crixa looks like in real life!

**Blackavar's Warning**

"The worst thing that can happen is death, and that's not the worst thing in the world either."  
Vice Admiral James Stockdale

"...if you ask me, he won't last much longer. He'll meet a blacker rabbit than himself, one of these nights."  
Captain Chervil, _Groping_

\---

The Watership rabbits were at silflay one fine autumn evening, when the topic of conversation turned to the formation of a new warren. Blackavar's usual habit was to listen carefully to anything the Chief Rabbit said, so he moved a little closer, nosing the grass.

"Groundsel wants to start something between here and Efrafa next spring, along the Belt," Hazel was saying. As he spoke, he stretched his lame leg out on the grass, enjoying the cool of the evening. "I suggested the location myself, but now I'm not sure it's the best place."

Bigwig gave a snort that shook his great, scarred form. "Why shouldn't it be? It's a nice enough spot, and it's easy to get there from both warrens. Not many elil, either." There was a lull in the conversation, as if it made them uncomfortable to speak of the many enemies of rabbitry, and then Bigwig went on.

"Well? Where _else_ are we going to put it?"

"That's the very problem, Bigwig," said Hazel. "We don't really know all that much about the territory around here, do we? We know the area around the warren, and of course we know Efrafa, but beyond that is only hearsay. Perhaps we could do with a scouting party or two before we start the new warren, just to be sure we don't miss anything."

Blackavar could feel his ears trying to perk up at this. He couldn't lift them, as they hadn't worked properly since they'd been torn by the Council in Efrafa, but they still tried from time to time, like a pair of old soldiers raising a token protest at their retirement from the front. He moved even closer, his whiskers twitching with interest.

"A fine idea!" said Bigwig. "Too bad Kehaar isn't back from his Big Water yet, he'd love that. And so will I; I haven't had a decent bit of exercise since we formed the new Owsla. Maybe I can take a few of the younger ones out to... er, where shall we go, anyway?"

"We've got a good idea of the lay of the land beneath the Down, but the area around Efrafa seems more interesting. Perhaps you should take them to the Crixa, then pick one direction or another. Blackavar, wasn't your mother from a warren off to the morning side?"

Blackavar was rather startled; he hadn't realized Hazel had caught him listening. "Yes, sir," he said. "It was called Nutley Copse."

"Well, that's as good a place as any to start, don't you think?"

"Yes, sir."

Hazel looked a bit put out; he could never get used to the Efrafan rabbits' insistence on rank. "Well, why don't you go along with Bigwig? Between the two of you, you ought to have no trouble at all."

"Yes, sir," said Blackavar, in just the same tone, but inside he was thrilled. A Wide Patrol! Blackavar quickly reminded himself that it wasn't any such thing, but the part of him that was Efrafan wasn't listening. It _was_ a Wide Patrol, even if the Watership rabbits didn't call it so, and the thought of it was very pleasant. He'd been chosen to go along with the Owsla, alongside Bigwig himself, and he'd be able to prove himself to his Chief -- no rabbit could have wished for more.

\---

Word spread fast through the Honeycomb that evening, and by nightfall nearly every buck in the warren wanted to go. In the end, Bigwig selected four: Blackavar, Groundsel, a heavy Efrafan rabbit named Thunder, and young Scabious, one of Clover's litter. Pipkin would not let them go until they promised to tell the story when they got back, so Dandelion was added to the group, making hrair. They resolved to set off the next morning, but Blackavar was too excited to sleep, just like in his Wide Patrol days. He passed the night playing bob-stones with Captain Holly, who rarely slept well, and Bluebell, who'd stayed up with his Captain. The latter made each cast of the stones into an elaborate joke, and still managed to win nearly every game. They all headed up to silflay as soon as the light showed.

The early morning was clear and cool, with just a touch of cloud high above. A tom-tit called from the trees above the beech hanger, "chika chika dee-!"; another answered it, and it flitted over to the edge of the combe where Blackavar and Holly had met the Efrafan troop, skirting the tops of the white rocks that peeked through the earth. It was a perfect day for a Wide Patrol. Before long, everyone had gathered outside Kehaar's old den, eager to begin. The goodbyes took quite some time: Clover made Scabious promise to be careful, Fiver showed up to give the enterprise his rather obscure blessing ("It might be a bit cold for some," he murmured, "other than that, fine"), and Bluebell asked Bigwig to bring him back a scar or two, for which he earned a playful cuff. Then, at last, they were off, racing down the hill.

They headed straight for the line of trees known as Caesar's Belt, traveling much more quickly than the Watership rabbits had the first time they'd journeyed to Efrafa. With such a small group, they were less vulnerable to attack, and in some ways late autumn on the Down was sleepier than it had been in summer. The crops were mostly in, and the abundance of chaff meant that both prey and predator were lazy, with plenty to eat. The pickings were a bit slimmer for rabbits, but there was grass enough near the Belt, and they reached it just past ni-Frith, slipping into the combe to the west.

They ate, and made a few rough scrapes, settling in for the day amongst the dry nettles. Considering the location, the choice of story was obvious ("Captain Thlayli And The Homba, _please_, Dandelion?" cried Scabious); as usual, Dandelion made a fine job of it, and Blackavar could almost feel himself there, watching as Bigwig unwittingly drew a fox onto the hapless Efrafan patrol. Bigwig himself seemed slightly annoyed by the retelling, and retired early, though he did allow that it was "a cheerier story than last time, at least".

Soon, Blackavar curled himself into a shallow scrape, and dreamed.

As was so often the case, he found himself back in the prison burrow in Efrafa. It was a merciful dream, because it wasn't the ripping, tearing claws of the Council, but it had a horror all its own. After they'd finished with him, they'd dragged him, broken and bleeding, and left him to lie; so it was in the dream.

The prison burrow was small: not quite long enough to stretch out in, and so low that a rabbit couldn't crouch properly, either. It was foul, smelling of blood and piss -- in the dream, it was somehow even worse than it had really been, enough to choke upon -- and when Blackavar woke, he knew at once that he had to clean himself, had to get the filth out of his ruined ears.

It was no good. He tried, but with the walls so close, and no one to help him, he couldn't reach to lick his ears properly. He squinched himself over on his side, flicking his tongue desperately at his horrid, flensed ears, running his paws over them. He was able to get a little of the mess off, but it was only enough to start them bleeding again, leaking into the dirt. He'd passed a day or two in that manner, trying to keep the flies away, before he'd fainted, the pain and blood loss more than he could stand. But the dreams always skipped that part. The fever always came next, as if it couldn't wait to burn him.

It came on him slowly, as if itself a dream, a heat that rose from within his sticky, matted ears to drive his sanity away. At first, it brought strange visions: a snarling homba, there in the run where the sentry had been; shifting patterns of light on the wall, forming pictures like the Shapes Strawberry had once described to him; Blackavar's father's face as he died while on Wide Patrol, cut down in his prime. Later, the fire in his head grew greater still, pushing him down into the dirt. He half-lay, half-crouched on his side in the dark, Frith only knows how long, the only sound a curious whistling that seemed to come and go with each labored breath, as if the wind were whipping down a long, narrow run.

It was then that he saw the Black Rabbit of Inlé.

In all the stories, the Black Rabbit called you when your time had come to die, but he did not call to Blackavar. He merely sat, not further away than a rabbit would sit from another at story-time. As dark as Blackavar himself was, the Black Rabbit's color was much more so, like the bottom of the deepest burrow at fu-Inlé. There was not a single part of him that was another color, not a hair nor a whisker, so much so that he looked almost false, like an afterimage of a rabbit seen for an instant in silhouette against Frith's disc.

He was looking at Blackavar, but his eyes were shrouded. Even so, Blackavar knew he had eyes, knew he'd truly _seen_ them, but he could never remember them afterward. He remembered what that gaze felt like, though, and the dream replayed it in awful clarity: cold, cold like frost on the heather in January. He shivered, cried out, and convulsed against the constricting walls of the burrow, biting at his paws, ranting aloud like a rabbit gone mad. And yet the Black Rabbit stayed, unmoved, until at last, at _last_, he was gone, as if he had never been there...

And Blackavar woke up. It had been some months since he'd had a dream like that, and for a moment it disoriented him. He had to remind himself that he was not in Efrafa... but perhaps his physical and psychological nearness to the place had triggered the nightmare. The scrape _was_ a little like the prison burrow, at that, very narrow and cramped. He could make out a glimmer of light outside; it was not quite sun-up, but close enough for an early start on silflay. Resolutely, he put the Black Rabbit behind him (though it _wasn't_ just the dream, he really _had_ come to Blackavar in the prison... hadn't he?) Shaking his head, he went outside, planning to eat, reconnoiter a bit, and then wait for the others.

\---

They started off early, making the first part of the journey through the wet haze that was still on the ground. Blackavar found it a bit annoying, but he merely shook his ears and reminded himself that "the things rabbits find hard are even harder on The Thousand", as the General used to say. Whether it was the misty weather or just luck, the group reached Efrafa by ni-Frith, without any incident. They came in by the old Near Hind Mark holes, crossing the bridle track and then skirting its edge until they were safely inside.

The Mark system was no longer as absolute as it had once been. Though most of the Efrafan rabbits still lived in the same burrows they'd had under the Marks, they were free to come and go. However, the burrows for each Mark still stood alone, with no underground connection between them. Campion-rah had decided that the advantage this afforded against plague and attack was greater than the annoyance of having to travel aboveground to reach the other Marks. This meant that the Watership rabbits had to send a runner to the Crixa in order to announce their presence; Dandelion was selected, and dashed off immediately. The rest of them settled down along the length of the run, chewing pellets in the meantime.

Their arrival had created a bit of a stir amongst the Near Mark Efrafans, and it wasn't long before Captain Avens came up from the deeper burrows. Up until now, being back in Efrafa hadn't bothered Blackavar much, but the sight of his one-time rival made his own pellets taste bitter in his mouth. He turned away, leaning into the side of the run, and listened with mounting annoyance as Avens spoke to Bigwig.

"...suppose you'll want to stay here a while, Thlayli-rah?"

Bigwig snorted. "It's just Thlayli, Avens. Hazel's our Chief Rabbit, _you_ know that. As for the burrows, we'll only need a few -- fewer than hrair, at any rate -- if you have any to spare. We'll stay tonight, and maybe again tomorrow depending on the weather, then start out for Nutley Copse in the morning."

"We're still a bit overcrowded, here, but I'm sure I can find you something," said Avens.

"We'd appreciate it," said Bigwig, by way of dismissal, but he didn't sound particularly appreciative. _He doesn't like being here any more than I do,_ thought Blackavar, with a sense of relief. He didn't want to be singled out as a rabbit who couldn't leave the past well enough alone; it made him feel a little better to know that the great Thlayli shared his feelings.

A small sound broke Blackavar's reverie -- while he'd been thinking, Avens had come up behind him, and was waiting patiently in the run. Blackavar moved over a bit, thinking that Avens wanted to pass, but the other rabbit stood still, until Blackavar finally turned and said, "What do you want?"

It came out rather more harshly than he'd meant it to, and Avens flinched, dropping his eyes to his front paws. "Er, Blackavar..." he began at last, "could I talk to you?"

"You can say anything you want to. It's a free warren, isn't it?" Blackavar gave this last a pointed tone, and Avens flinched again.

"That's not what I meant. I wanted to talk to you... alone, if I can."

Blackavar nearly told him off, Owsla officer or not, but something in Avens' voice stopped him. He sounded almost miserable, as if there were something weighing upon him, and Blackavar understood that very well. He looked at Avens -- truly _at_ him, because Avens would or could not meet his gaze -- noting the slight trembling in the other rabbit's ears. "All right," he sighed, turning to hop up the run. "Follow me."

They went up, blinking, into the sun. The intensity of Frith's light made open exposure seem unappealing, so they crouched beneath a patch of gorse at the edge of the hole, looking out across the field. As Blackavar waited for Avens to speak, he watched a pair of nuthatches take flight. They were silhouetted against the clouds over the iron road, close to where Avens and the other Efrafan officers had tried to kill Blackavar and the other members of the escape party.

"Er, how are you getting on, then, at the Watership warren?" Avens asked haltingly.

It was a poor excuse for small talk, and Blackavar suddenly had no patience for it. "Is _that_ what you wanted to tell me?" he snapped. Then he glanced at Avens, and stopped short, for the other rabbit looked as miserable as any he'd ever seen. "Never mind, it's all right," he found himself saying, in a softer tone. "What is it?"

For a long moment, Avens was silent. He wasn't looking at Blackavar, _again_, and Blackavar was about to shout at him for it when he finally spoke.

"Sorry!" Avens blurted, almost so quick that Blackavar couldn't catch it.

"What?"

"I'm sorry," Avens repeated, softly. "So very sorry. When I think of it now, it seems so horrid -- and I can't stop thinking about it, you know -- how they... hurt you. You and all the others who ended up before the Council. I just stood by and watched it happen... and then everything went wrong, and now everything is changed, and I don't know what to do to make it right." Avens trailed off, then finished lamely, "I wish I could take it all back."

For a moment, Blackavar just stared at him. It was utterly beyond his experience for an Efrafan officer to admit a mistake, much less something as great as this, and he had no idea how to respond to it.

"I only meant to tell you how sorry I am," whispered Avens.

Rabbits do not weep, as men do, but they sometimes cry in their own way, when met with extreme emotional trauma or fear. Avens began to do so, trembling against the ground in shame, and for a moment Blackavar thought the poor fellow might go tharn. He leaned against the Efrafan gently, giving comfort, thinking only to stop him before he brought all manner of elil down upon them. A long moment passed, and then Avens snuffled, nuzzling Blackavar's mutilated ears, as if by doing so he might put them to rights again.

"Wish I could have done something," he murmured. "I _should_ have done something."

"They'd only have torn your ears, too," Blackavar said. Then, at length: "I hated you, you know. Because you were picked for the Captain's position, and I wasn't."

Avens looked up at him, finally, and Blackavar said, "I think I'll always hate you for that, at least a little. But I don't blame you for what happened afterward. That was my choice, and the price I had to pay for it." He paused. "Besides, it turned out for the best in the end, don't you think?"

Avens turned and looked out over the grounds of his Mark, the edges of each blade of grass picked out in yellow by the autumn sun. "I hope so," he said, letting out a slow breath he'd been holding for what Blackavar suspected was a very long time.

"I hope so."

Blackavar waited for him to speak again, but after a time it was clear that Avens didn't have anything more to say. Blackavar murmured a goodbye and left him there with his thoughts, retreating back down the run. He met Dandelion coming the other way.

"Oh, hello, Blackavar," said Dandelion.

"How did things go at the Crixa?"

"Well enough. Campion-rah sends his welcome. He says we can stay as long as we need to. I'm supposed to talk to Captain Avens about getting us some burrows, have you seen him?"

"Up there," said Blackavar. He turned to go, but Dandelion stopped him.

"Campion gave me a message for you, you know. He asked me to tell you that you're welcome in Efrafa, if you ever want to return. He showed me a whopping scar on his shoulder and said 'we can use any rabbit that can give me a bite like this one'. Can you believe it?"

Blackavar could; it was a thoroughly Efrafan thing to say.

"What do you think, are you going to stay?" asked Dandelion.

"Don't know. To tell you the truth, I never really thought about it."

"Well, we should be sorry to see you go if you do. I'll still tell your story, though."

Blackavar paused, surprised. "Thanks, Dandelion," he said at last. They touched noses, and Blackavar headed down the run. He couldn't help but think of how odd the Watership rabbits were -- surely not in a bad way, but still, they were very different. Their easy camaraderie was nothing like the bonds he'd made in Efrafa: forged by mutual risk and courage, broken by the slightest hint of disloyalty. Hazel and the others had taken Blackavar into their confidence from the start, knowing nothing about him, and he was never sure where he stood with them as a result. _Maybe I ought to go home, after all,_ he thought. _But will I really fit in any better in Efrafa?_

Bigwig and the others were waiting further down, at a point where the mouths of several smaller runs joined the main one. Blackavar waited with them until Avens and Dandelion returned; soon, everyone had a place to sleep (three to a burrow, Efrafan style). To pass the time, Dandelion sat in the run outside the burrows and began to tell a tale -- the rather fanciful story of El-ahrairah, Rowsby Woof, And The Hrududu. The story was so unbelievable, and so well-told, that it attracted a small crowd of Efrafan rabbits. Together they waited for evening, the run made comfortably warm by the heat of many bodies.

\---

Efrafa was purposely placed close to humanity, on Woundwort's advice. He had not considered human beings to be a major threat to a well-organized warren: it was possible to hide from them, and they kept other elil away by their noxious presence. Thus, he'd built his warren at the crossing of two rather busy bridle paths. Bigwig and the others had been concerned about this, but Campion assured them that traveling the overgrown edges of the path would be safer than attempting to cut through open fields.

Because of this, the Watership rabbits decided to head out the next morning, despite the rain. "It might keep the humans and their horses out of our way, at least," Bigwig muttered as they started off, flicking water off his ears.

Though the tops of the trees along the bridle path grew heavy and oppressive with the wet, they found that the ground beneath the undergrowth was relatively dry. As it turned out, it was quite easy to traverse; they were clearly not the only creatures to have traveled that way, as Dandelion found evidence of yonil and lendri. The latter were a bit worrisome, but as Blackavar reckoned, they'd probably be more interested in post-rain slugs than in a group of full-grown rabbits. Still, they went the length of the path very cautiously, moving in short bursts, and only when nothing could be seen or heard ahead.

They'd been moving for some time when Thunder suddenly stopped, stamped, then crouched low in the grass at the edge of the trees. Everyone mirrored him, keeping perfectly still. Moments later, a rider came leisurely around a bend in the path. They watched him go, without a single twitch to betray themselves.

"There's a turn here," Thunder said quietly, after they were sure the man was gone. "But we're meant to go on straight, right?"

Blackavar concurred. "If we cut through the edge of the wood just here, Nutley Copse should be on the other side. Mother always said that the warren was on the evening side of the copse, by a big rock." He'd never seen the place, but he had a mental image of it: shadowed, safe, and quiet, the silence broken only by the sound of the leaves in the trees... that is, until the Efrafans had come.

The area beneath the trees turned out to be relatively open and empty -- "No dogs in _this_ wood, eh, Dandelion?" said Bigwig -- and they made very good time, slipping from the base of one tree to another. By ni-Frith they'd reached the other side. They sat there quietly for a time, grazing a bit before leaving the relative safety of cover.

They quickly crossed a small road, keeping an ear to the ground for hrududil, then dashed through an open field and into the copse itself. It was not nearly as open as the wood had been; the human habit of cutting alder in winter and leaving the stumps to grow back in spring had created dense, almost shrub-like clumps of shoots, sprouting up from wide stools of stumps. Some had not yet lost all their leaves, but others were bare, and the ground on which they walked was thickly littered and rustling. Though they were barely more than a short run's distance from the edge of the copse, the place gave Blackavar a feeling of winter, one that seemed out of place amongst the dappled streaks of sun on the ground.

The others fanned out in search of the warren, but Blackavar wandered as if in a dream, overlaid by shadow and light. As he moved, the leaves seemed to whisper in his ears, just as his mother had whispered in Efrafa, afraid that the Council might hear. _Home_, they seemed to say, _this is where you belong_. But like both Efrafa and Watership, this place didn't seem to fit him, and as Blackavar hopped further along, he began to feel ill at ease.

The feeling grew as he moved further along the edge of the copse. There, overshadowed by one of the few large trees, was a great standing stone, as dark in color as Blackavar himself. It seemed to tower over him, and the tree towered over it in turn. It was nowhere near as large as the Watership warren's great beech, or even the ash tree in the field near Efrafa, but the deliberately truncated shapes of the other alders made it seem swollen and huge by comparison, as did the wide, bulbous group of stumps at its base.

Scattered among them were the openings of the Nutley Copse warren's holes, their edges crumbling with neglect. This disturbed Blackavar, as no warren normally went unoccupied for long. Had no other rabbits moved in since the General's fall? He found it difficult to believe.

He stamped out a summons, calling the others to his side. All but Scabious went down ("you stay here and keep out of trouble. Stamp if you see anything, understand?" said Bigwig). They went one by one, spreading out to search inside. The other rabbits seemed curious, yet otherwise unaffected by the place, but as he entered the burrows, Blackavar felt nervous. As he poked about, he kept himself ready to dash back up to the surface at any moment. The burrows beneath were thick with fallen dust, and there were places where the sun shone in from above; these had been the entrance points for the Efrafan invaders, years before. Blackavar stopped suddenly, as the shifting pattern of the light on the floor in front of one of the runs caught his eye. He'd seen something like it before, surely, but where? He edged forward, fighting his mounting fear, until he was almost in the mouth of the run. He could hear something within, and cocked his head until his ravaged ears could pick it up. Was it... whistling?

To enter took all his courage, developed over seasons of tracking and fighting with the Wide Patrol. Inside the run was dark, and small, and headed upward at a shallow angle. The high, thin sound within built until it surrounded him, smothering. The air was moving inside, sliding steadily past him, and in it he could scent something sweet and hot and achingly familiar. He worked his way up the run, tasting the air, shivering from the sudden cold. Where were the others? Couldn't anyone else feel it?

The run went along for some distance, before Blackavar spotted daylight from above. Beside the mouth of the run, not more than two body-lengths inside, was a rough scrape, half in shadow. It was too short to stand in, and too narrow to lie down in, as if its maker had stopped digging halfway through. All in all, it was an ordinary scrape, the sort of thing a hlessi might make, but as Blackavar peeked inside, he understood the source of his unease.

Inside was the body of a male rabbit, obviously newly dead. But the surface of his body was _moving_, as tiny, almost invisible mites swarmed across the scaly, patchy fur. Above them, the poor creature's ears were ripped even more badly than Blackavar's, and so thick with congealed blood and diseased skin that they hung in fat, clumping tatters. Blackavar jumped back, his mouth curled up in disgust like a cat's... and as he did so, he saw that the ground around the mouth of the run was moving, too, teeming and crawling with mites.

He whirled, moving back down the run as fast as he could, shivering with horror. _How awful! If I'd gone in the other way, they'd have got me, too. I'd never have been rid of them,_ he thought. _That poor fellow tore his own ears and still couldn't get them off._ Yet as he neared the bottom of the run, he couldn't help but turn and look back. The slightest glimmer of light touched the sides of the run, not quite penetrating the scrape where the hlessi had died... and there, beside it, was a darker shadow still, watching Blackavar with cold, cold eyes.

"Thank you, my lord," Blackavar said softly, "for the warning." Then he turned away, calling for his friends, eager to leave the place behind.

\---

As they made their way along the path back to Efrafa, Dandelion stopped him. "How ever did you know, Blackavar? Been talking to Fiver, have you?"

To speak the truth seemed to sully it, and besides, Blackavar wasn't sure he wanted to tell anyone, not yet. "Not any more than you have, and we all know _you're_ not a magic rabbit," said Blackavar. "At least, not unless there's a dog on your heels or a tale to be told."

"I suppose that's so," Dandelion agreed. "Still, it's an odd thing. Sometimes it seems as if there's only a scrap of chance between any of us and Inlé."

Blackavar agreed. "It's a hard world for any rabbit that doesn't have a place to call home. I felt that way in Efrafa, and sometimes even back in the Honeycomb... I thought coming here might help, but it seems this isn't my place, either. Maybe I don't _have_ a home?"

Dandelion thought about that for a while, then said, "You know, home doesn't fit anybody perfectly. That sorry chap down there fits his burrow now and forever, right down to the skin, but the living aren't like that. Rabbits have got to keep running, Blackavar, right up until the day the Black Rabbit calls our names. As long as you're running, why not run with us?"

Blackavar thought of that, and felt the last of the prison burrow's chill leave his fur. "All right, then, I'll race you to the Crixa!"

Dandelion let him win, and Blackavar was not surprised in the least.


End file.
